Charles I: A Case of Mistaken Identity*

Abstract

For my part I do believe he was not the worst, but the most unfortunate of kings.1 There is no event in the history of the British monarchy more studied than the downfall of Charles I. It riveted the attention of contemporaries and has fascinated historians ever since. It is one of those defining historical moments that serve as a prism through which the present sees itself. Sometimes the collapse of the Stuart monarchy has been told as the tale of an ineffectual king, a lesson in the consequences of gripping the reins too loosely.2 At other times, it has been seen as a conspiracy of ambitious men who overwhelmed their sovereign.3 In the nineteenth century Charles’s ouster was viewed as a consequence of the growth of parliamentary democracy and religious liberty.4 Subsequently, it was likened to a stage of historical inevitability, when a decaying feudal monarchy was replaced by a thrusting commercial bourgeoisie.5 Lately, the king’s overthrow has been interpreted as a moment in the history of freedom: it was a stand against tyranny by defenders of the liberties of a freeborn people.6 If seventeenth-century authors used models based on the history of Rome to interpret their own lives, generations of historians after 1649 have taught their lessons through the fall of the monarchy of Charles I.

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